I have a suggestion that if you want to blank our something that you have typed in that you have to put in 10 spaces if it's a 10 letter word, can we not just leave it blank and have the word blanked out?

Chris, i suppose you can leave it blank,then, what is the fun? it is a brain teaser, just search online books for sql server or google to get some answers. once you do search, you remember the answer for ever and am sure you will get a feeling of accomplishment. if you do complete the puzzle you will qualify for a prize from publisher.

I enjoyed doing the puzzle. I'm not a DBA per-say and so it was fun to see how many I could get on my own and how many answers I could get with additional research. I was happy at how many I could get on my own. However, even with lots of research, I still couldn't get all the answers.

To keep the puzzle fun and the level of question about where it is, I would not do it too often. Maybe once a quarter or even twice a year. Just my 2 cents.

Also, if I get one answer wrong and realize it after getting another answer in the puzzle, I need to be able to erase the first answer. It wasn't clear how to do that. I think the above postings tried to address that issue by saying to put in spaces, but I'm not sure I understood the above postings.

1) make it easy for everyone who participated (ie, sent in their best guess at answers) to get the official answers. If the official method of turning in our efforts is via e-mail, then at least send an e-mail back to the participants with a link to the answers when they are posted.

2) clearly state in the article up-front what date the answers will be available and then honor that date.

3) do not post the answers in the article itself. That way, people in the future can still play. Instead, when the answers are available, put a link to the answers on the puzzle/article page. That way, when people are ready to check their answers, they can.

JJ, if you want to erase an answer, just click on the cell where the word starts, it will open up the clue with your prefilled (in this case, the wrong answer) and just delete and include the new answer and click OK, that should do the trick.

Ravi: The problem was that I didn't have an alternative answer. All I knew was that say the third letter had to be a 'p' instead of a 'g'. So, I needed to actually erase the first answer. Because it wouldn't let me erase (as near as I could tell), instead, I had to put in X's for the letters I didn't know. This cluttered the puzzle, making it harder to see which words I still had to work on, and was a pain in terms of user experience. Maybe spaces would have worked, but that would still have been more effort that I wanted. None of this is a major deal. I'm just giving feedback. Thanks,- JJ